Elin Hilderbrand - Summerland

He pivoted away and yanked at his tie. She was about to remind him to thank the Looms for having him when he turned around.

“Hey, Mom?”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I talked to Patrick about Georgetown. He’s going to let me visit and stay with him in his dorm so I can see what it’s like.”

“Great,” Zoe said. As her son loped away, her mind turned to darker worries. Hobby would visit Patrick Loom in Washington, Hobby would possibly go to college in D.C., or Palo Alto, or Durham, North Carolina. She could barely stand the thought: she was going to lose him.

At the hospital, there were times when Zoe was allowed in the room with Hobby and times when she wasn’t. When she was in with him, she touched his face and squeezed his good hand and talked about the past-stories he’d heard, stories he hadn’t. He was still in a coma.

After who knows how many days, Al Castle left, and Claire Buckley and her mother, Rasha, showed up to take his place. Zoe saw them enter the hospital waiting room, and though she recognized them, she couldn’t come up with their names. All of the facts of her life had blended into a gray soup. The girl and her mother approached Zoe, and she thought, Hobby’s friend? Or Penny’s? The girl looked as bereft as Zoe felt, her hair lank and greasy and pulled into a limp ponytail. She had a spray of acne on her chin; her eyes were swollen, as though she’d been in a prizefight. The mother looked slightly more pulled together, if sheepish, as though she had no idea what to say to Zoe. Of course she had no idea what to say. There was nothing to say.

“Zoe?” the woman said. “I’m Rasha Buckley? This is my daughter, Claire?”

Zoe stood up, mortified. It was Claire Buckley, Hobby’s prom date, the girl whom he was not in love with but who he thought was cool. Claire Buckley must be in love with Hobby, however, because, well, just look at her.

Zoe embraced Claire Buckley. and Claire dissolved into tears, and it felt strange to Zoe to be the one offering comfort.

Claire whispered, “He has to wake up. He just has to.”

Zoe held Claire tightly. There was something beatific in Claire at that moment, Zoe thought, something holy. Claire had an aura about her, a good energy. Zoe was glad Al Castle had gone home to Nantucket. She was glad Claire had come in his place.

Claire and her mother stayed at the hospital each day from 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Rasha brought Zoe food that looked so appetizing, Zoe couldn’t resist it. Rasha brought her a fluffier pillow and a softer fleece blanket but didn’t suggest that she leave the chairs. She didn’t suggest that Zoe change out of Hobby’s Whalers T-shirt, either. She understood that Zoe was keeping vigil and that being uncomfortable and unclean was part of it.

As grateful as Zoe was for the sensitive Buckley presence, she was relieved that in the evenings, when she went in to sit with Hobby, it was just the two of them alone.

On the ninth night, she decided to talk to Hobby about his father’s death. Zoe had always meant to tell the twins when they were old enough to handle it, but then when they were old enough to handle it, she’d thought, Why burden them?

She should have told Penny on one of those nights when her daughter had crawled into her bed. Because now she’d lost her chance.

She wouldn’t lose her chance with Hobby. He was unconscious, but the neurosurgeon was a spiritual man in addition to being a hyperintelligent wizard genius, and he had told her that he thought talking to coma patients helped them. It gave them a place to hook their consciousness. Something like 75 percent of coma patients who regained consciousness did so while being talked to, he said.

Hobson senior had been Zoe’s professor; this the kids knew. What they didn’t know, and might not appreciate, was how Zoe had fallen in love with him over the course of the semester, how she had anticipated Meats class with a thumping heart. She was mesmerized by the way he handled his knives and cleavers, she was smitten with his British accent, she was wowed by his physical size. She tried to figure out if he was married: he wore no ring, but many chefs chose not to wear rings. He seemed fond of Zoe, he lingered at her station, he occasionally touched her back. She played it cool, though she was hardly the only student hopelessly in love with him. Around campus he was known as either the Meatmeister, by the many fans of his bratwurst, or the Prime Minister of Meat, by the girls who swooned at his accent. There were female students who shamelessly flaunted their affections. A girl named Susannah brought him a hot latte before every class; another, named Kay, once sliced her thumb to the tendon-maybe an accident, maybe a cry for his attention.

Zoe saw Hobson out one night at Georgie O’s, drinking a pitcher of beer with some other men. It was the first time she’d seen him out of his whites; he was wearing jeans and a Clash T-shirt. Zoe waved, he beckoned her over, she stopped to talk. He was with two other professors, both older, one of them the hard-ass chef from Lyon, Jean-Marc Volange, who taught Basic Skills I. Zoe knew not to linger. She moved to the bar. A while later, the bartender put a glass of good white Burgundy in front of her and told her it was from the professors. Zoe was afraid to turn around. She savored the wine; she suspected it was the Montrachet, which famously went for thirty dollars a glass. Hobson came over and put his hand lightly on her back, the way he did in class. She felt her face heat up. She said, “Thank you for the wine. You shouldn’t have.”

He said, “You’re right, I shouldn’t have. It’s very bad form. But I couldn’t resist.”

“It’s the Montrachet?” she said.

“I thought you should taste the best.”

The night had ended with their passionately kissing against the side of his car.

He said, “In three weeks, the semester is over. We should wait.”

Zoe agreed: “We should wait.”

But he called her the next morning, and by the weekend they were inseparable.

Even to this day, Zoe could not believe how lucky she had been to be the one who won the heart of Hobson Alistair over other girls like Susannah and Kay. He was magnificent, a prince, a god, a rock star.

How many times had Zoe looked upon her children and thought, You will never know how kind and luminous and talented and dynamic your father was. I can tell you and tell you, but you’ll never know.

“When your father died,” Zoe said to Hobby now, “I was pregnant with you and Penny.”

The pregnancy had been an accident. Faulty diaphragm. At the same time that Zoe was graduating from the CIA, at the same time that she was trying to decide if she should accept the sous chef job at Alison’s on Dominick, the hottest restaurant in SoHo, she was also feeling dizzy and lightheaded and nauseated. Then she missed her period, and she thought, Oh God, no. She and Hobson were madly, stupidly in love. The love was so new, it hadn’t lost any of its sheen. But it was all about Sunday mornings in bed, playing Billie Holliday and drinking champagne. It was about making each other dinner, trying to outcook each other. It was about playing darts at Georgie O’s until two in the morning, then skinny-dipping in the Hudson, Zoe and Hobson floating on their backs naked, holding hands. It was about reading each other passages from M. F. K. Fisher. It was about planning trips to Berkeley to eat at Chez Panisse and Chicago to visit Charlie Trotter. Their relationship was only about the immediate future. It was not about a baby.

And yet when she told Hobson she was pregnant, he was dazzled. He picked her up and swung her around. He said, “I’m going to marry you.” Zoe opened her mouth to protest, and he said, “I’m going to marry you, woman.”